


as in olden days

by scrunchyharry



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Canada, Christmas Fluff, Fluff, French Louis Tomlinson, Happy Ending, Holidays, Hotels, Language Barrier, M/M, Mutual Pining, New Year's Fluff, New Year's Kiss, Sharing a Bed, Snowed In, Strangers to Lovers, Winter, holiday romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:00:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28458663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrunchyharry/pseuds/scrunchyharry
Summary: Château Frontenac hotel, Christmas 1925When his father insisted the entire family spend Christmas abroad in one of his new investments, Harry dreaded the prospect of being trapped for weeks in the biting Canadian cold, so far away from the roaring excitement of his London life. As he crossed half of the world to be buried under a thick blanket of snow, he never imagined he would meet a charming bellhop who would do his best to keep him warm.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Comments: 27
Kudos: 103





	as in olden days

**Author's Note:**

> This is absolutely self-indulgent and not something I would have normally written. I try to keep some separation between my life and my writing, except that most of my inspiration for fics come from places I've visited and because of the nightmare that was 2020, instead of going to Italy like I had been planning for years, I ended up travelling within my own province in accordance with public safety recommendations. How's that for a cheerful author's note?
> 
> There's French in this, quite a lot of it, but the parts that are important to the story are explicit enough that the meaning isn't lost even without a fluency in the language. Any grammar mistake in the French sentences are intentional and placed there on purpose. 
> 
> A massive thank you to [writing_practice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/writing_practice/pseuds/writing_practice) for being my cheerleader and beta and pushing me to finish this when I wanted to give it up because I worried no one would be interested in it.

Frost painted arabesques on the windows of the train, deforming the scenery scrolling by as it made its slow, steady way across the countryside. Harry let out a sigh, a long-suffering puff of air that made his mother nudge him and shake her head in disapproval.

It had been a long way from London and he was exhausted, but of course he could not let it show. They were in public, lest he forgot, and there were appearances to keep up. That being said, he had not had a proper night of sleep since they left London the week before and it was clouding the edges of his mind, making him feel like the past few days had been a hazy dream.

From London there had been the train to Southampton, then the ship, a massive thing that almost scared Harry in its size—and with the memory of the sinking of the Titanic not even fifteen years before, he felt justified in his fear—from Southampton to Halifax. Harry had protested their port of arrival, vehemently:  _ why Halifax, when they could have gone on straight to Quebec City? Why make their trip even more inconvenient than necessary? _ he had whined to his father on the telephone. The reply had been curt, impatient, without any possibility of whinging. His father was an important investor in the Canadian Pacific railway system and by god, they were going to be an example and use the goddamn railway system.

So, then, from Halifax to Sherbrooke for a final transfer to make their way to Quebec City, and that final transfer had been the place of a particularly animated quarrel between him and his mother, all of it taking place in hushed whispers, of course. Because Harry could have diverged from their plan and boarded a train headed south to New York, the train had been right there, in the station, and he was almost brave enough to consider what might have been if he had gone against his mother’s orders and made a run for it.

Twenty-one and alone in the big city, at the centre of the world where everything could happen, he could almost taste the sparkling excitement of the sharp turn his life would have taken. No more stuffy ballrooms and banquets regimented by antiquated rules. He could reinvent himself, be freed of the weight of that terrible label, that stain upon their name,  _ new money _ , and instead be a new man, a self-made man, one of the bright young things that glittered up and down the New York streets of his mind.

Instead, he was stuck in a cold train car suffering through a pastoral frozen hellscape where he would be expected to dazzle the crowds of investors and businessmen as he shadowed his father at work in a barely-veiled attempt at grooming Harry to take a job in the city to represent him. 

“Did you know,” his sister said, breaking the silence and looking up from the pamphlet she was reading, “that Quebec City is one of the oldest in North America? Over 500 years old, that’s interesting, isn’t it?”

“My school was older than that,” Harry muttered to himself, though he flashed a smile at his sister and nodded.

Outside the windows, deserted snow-covered hills kept rolling by, dotted here and there by bright farm buildings, but it struck Harry how much  _ nothingness _ there was, how uninhabited the land felt, and it was wild for him to think that they had so much space that the locals had the freedom to leave some of it bare. He began scratching patterns in the frost of the window, but his mother stopped him with a stern look, telling him to stop acting like a child. He sighed and sipped on his warm mug of mulled wine.

That was one thing Canada had going for itself, he supposed: no prohibition. If it took mulled wine to get his mind off his New York dreams, then so be it. He would get a new dream of escape soon enough, in any case. His mind was prolific in supplying him with new ones every few weeks, whenever he began feeling antsy and restless in the straightjacket of his life, where years upon years of learning to become his father awaited him.

Outside the window, over the horizon, Harry could see the beginning of a city appearing, the hazy shapes of buildings visible in the clear, cold air. The train crossed a bridge and Harry leaned closer to the window to look down at the wide river below, its slow and steady flow carrying ice floats down the white-capped waters. 

From the bridge, the train made a turn and finished its trek alongside the river, its shimmering waters almost blinding under the high afternoon sun, until, at last, it slowed down as they reached an imposing train station in the style of a castle.

A chauffeur awaited them when they stepped out of the train and Harry was relieved to have the end of this journey in sight. He longed for nothing more than to get settled into his room and soak in a long, warm bath. They followed the chauffeur out of the station to the automobile and Harry froze, quite literally, as he stepped outside.

It had been cold in Halifax, colder than what he was used to in London, but he was not prepared for the deep, penetrating bite of the air cutting through the laughably thin layers he had put on, thinking he would be protected. He let out a gasped laugh, at a loss for what else to do.

Turning to one of the station employees loading their suitcases into the trunk of the car, he asked, “How cold is it, today?” only to be met with a puzzled frown. 

Ah, right. French.

Clearing his throat, he started over. “ _ Quelle est la,  _ huh _ , température? _ ” he asked, wincing to hear himself talk. He had not practiced his French since his school days.

“ _ Moins dix, monsieur _ ,” the boy replied, wiping his nose with the back of his mittened hand.

“ _ Moins _ ... Minus ten!  _ Ah,  _ very... _ très froid! _ ”

The boy shrugged. “ _ Pas tant que ça. On est juste en décembre _ .”

Harry forced a smile, not quite sure he understood the boy well and too proud to admit it. Instead, he thanked him and climbed into the car, finding no solace from the cold there. He watched his mother and sister bury their hands deep inside their fur muffs, jealous as he clenched and unclenched his fists to try and thaw his fingers.

The automobile took them through the narrow streets of the city, the buildings around them mostly three story stone houses crowded together at the very edge of the sidewalk. He supposed this qualified as “old”, though they were probably more recent than the estate his grandfather purchased from a bankrupt earl when he made his fortune.

He sighed and shook his head, a brief, almost unperceivable motion made for himself alone. He was being unfairly snobbish, letting his frustration at having been pulled away from his social life cloud the experience. It was a gorgeous city, at least from what he had seen so far, and the quaint stone houses with their colourful roofs and doors, the small shops peppered along the way, it all was very inviting and he was sure he would love to stroll down these streets once he had had some proper sleep and, possibly, a polar bear pelt on his back.

Ahead of them, the hotel made its slow appearance over the horizon, perched as it was on top of a hill, ‘the highest point in the city’ his sister helpfully pointed out. The middle tower stood out against the clear blue sky, the oxidized copper roofs of the walls encircling it adding to the impression that they had been transported straight to the Loire region of France. 

When Harry had read, ahead of the trip, that the hotel had been built in the style of a  _ château de la Loire _ in the late 1800s, in  _ Canada _ , he had scoffed and rolled his eyes, wondering why anyone would want a facsimile when one could just, you know, go to France. He had prepared himself to be underwhelmed, to look down on the hotel and its foolish ideas of grandeur, but all of these unkind thoughts were long gone from his mind.

It worked. He could not quite explain how, or why, but it worked, that the old stone buildings all converged to the tip of the hill where this  _ château _ stood, and he was completely charmed by it. 

The automobile turned into a small alley, passing underneath an archway before stopping in a courtyard where the hotel’s turrets made like a forest around them. Bellhops in maroon double-breasted uniforms, their gold buttons shining in the sun, flocked around the automobile to handle their baggage and Harry stepped out of their way, hurrying inside of the hotel, towards the promise of warmth. He cast a glance back at them, letting his eyes linger, their uniforms catching his eye in a very distracting way.

The lobby was a warm embrace, the dark coffered ceiling and the golden doors of the elevators shimmering from the electric light of the chandeliers and the illuminated Christmas trees scattered across the room. He let his mother handle the check-in process, instead wandering around the lobby to take in the sights. He noticed a boutique at the end of a wide hallway and made a note to visit it later, hoping to find some proper winter attire if he wished to see the new year with all ten of his toes.

From the lobby, they were escorted up to their rooms, the manager of the hotel explaining to them that they would be in the newest section, near the top of the tower with the best view of the city and the bordering river. Handing them their keys, he promised their baggage would soon arrive and then spent much too long assuring them that he was at their service, should they need anything. All Harry wanted was for the man to leave so he could shed his clothes and put his travel-weary, frostbitten body in a nice, warm,  _ long _ bath.

At last, after a speech the length of a Shakespearian play, the man departed and it was agreed that the family would meet for dinner in their private dining room, their father having sent the promise that he would join them. At that point, Harry would have agreed to anything and he was already halfway inside the room when his mother finally ended the conversation. 

He shut the door with a sigh and made a beeline for the fire roaring in the hearth, toeing off his snow-soaked shoes and drenched socks as he went. The room was small, but sumptuously decorated with a plush bed that called for Harry to take a nap. ith the journey still clouding his mind, he worried he would sleep through the night and wake to very cross parents though. 

From where he stood by the fire, he could catch a glimpse out of one of the windows at the corner of the room and he guessed, from the configuration, that his room was in one of the turrets he had noticed on his way in. The river was almost blinding in the distance, the sun reflecting on the water and the ice, and everywhere he looked, snow glittered and sparkled, making the world look like it had been dusted in confectioner’s sugar.

Once he could feel his extremities once more, he turned from the fire and headed for the bathroom, heaving a sigh of relief when he saw that he had a bathtub. It would have been quite horrendous, the idea of spending weeks in literal Winter—it went beyond the season, this whole country seemed to be the very personification of the word cold—without a tub to soak in and thaw the frost from his bones. 

He turned on the water and rummaged through the complimentary toiletries. Finding a heady floral oil, he poured some of it in the water, the scent immediately filling the room and already melting some of the tension from his travel-weary muscles.

Stepping into the tub nearly knocked the air out of his lungs, the contrast between his skin and the—albeit unreasonably—hot water almost too much to bear, but he waited a beat for his skin to get used to it before sinking in to his chin and closing his eyes. 

This would do.

Soon, against his will, he found himself drifting off to sleep, the lulling sound of the fire crackling in the next room and the plops of water droplets leaking from the faucet pulling him under, the exhaustion from days of travel finally bearing down on him. He could close his eyes for a moment, it would not hurt, and they burned from lack of sleep... just a few seconds, no more...

He came to with a gasp as he heard the door to the suite open and close and the sound of footsteps walking through the room. His heart hammered in his chest as the tendrils of sleep still clinging to his reason made him imagine myriad scenarios that belonged in novels and he braced himself to be murdered, or kidnapped, or kidnapped to be murdered, all of this happening while he was embarrassingly, resolutely and unbearably  _ naked _ .

The door to the bathroom had been left opened and the culprit came into view seconds later, piercing through Harry’s growing panic to reveal himself as a bellhop, the unmistakable maroon of his jacket and matching pillbox hat replacing the fear coursing through Harry’s veins with panic to be caught naked and vulnerable.

He shifted in the bath and the water sloshed around. The sound startled the bellhop, who turned with a gasp and cast blue eyes the size of saucers on Harry.

“ _ Oh non, je suis vraiment désolé monsieur, je ne croyais pas que vous étiez encore là! J’ai cogné et je n’ai pas eu de réponse, j’ai assumé que vous étiez sorti, je suis réellement désolé, oh non, c’est tellement embarrassant, ne le dites pas à mon patron, d’accord? Je m’en vais, je pars, regardez, je suis disparu, _ ” followed by a muttered “ _ merde! _ ”

Though his words were lost on Harry, the panic on the boy’s face was clear as day, and though he was embarrassed to admit it because of the, ah, uncomfortable situation he found himself in, it was a good face, that boy’s. 

“ _ Attendre! _ ” Harry said, wincing. He had a feeling this was not the right word, but he hoped the sound of his voice would keep the boy in the room.

“I am not looking, sir,” the boy replied, his voice coming from just outside of the doorframe. His accent was thick when he spoke English and Harry bit his lip, feeling a familiar tingle in his heart at the sight of a beautiful man. It had been a while since it fluttered for someone, but it was unmistakable. “I saw nothing before and nothing now.”

“Just... just wait,” Harry repeated, pulling himself up and out of the tub. He looked around and tensed. “I don’t have... is there a bathrobe in the room?”

“A robe...” the boy repeated. “Why would you want a dress-- _ oh! Oui, merde, un peignoir, je veux dire-- _ huh, yes, there is a bathrobe.”

Harry heard him walk over to the closet for a moment before an arm holding out a bathrobe extended into the room. He slipped it on, wrapping it tightly around himself, before he stepped out of the bathroom and finally laid eyes on the intruder.

The bellhop was a breath shorter than he was, with expressive blue eyes highlighting the delicate features of—Harry held back a flinch at the speed at which his mind had run ahead of him, already complimenting the boy, already taking notice of whether or not Harry found him  _ attractive _ , and did his mind need to be reminded that he was still almost naked?

“I’m truly sorry, sir,” the boy said, hands clasped behind his back, his shoulders a tense line betraying the placid expression on his face. 

And still, that  _ accent _ , the sharp edges of French peeking through his words despite the perfect grammar.

“It’s fine,” Harry replied, shrugging, aiming for nonchalance and, hopefully, landing somewhere near unaffected. “I think you might have saved my life.”

The boy cocked his head to the side, his curiosity piercing through the mask of professionalism he still tried to keep on. “I did?”

“I fell asleep in the tub. I could have drowned.”

The boy’s eyes flicked down for a second before he looked up at Harry’s face once more. Harry swore the man’s clean-shaven cheeks were pinker than before. “This would be bad, finding a corpse and having to explain I did not do it.”

“Quite.” Harry pressed his lips against a smile. “So, huh, you were bringing my baggage?”

With a huff, the bellhop rolled his eyes, freezing a second later with a wide-eyed look of worry. “Sorry, I should not have done this. I,  _ euh _ , no. I’m not here for the baggage. I’m here because you are a guest of honour and I’m at your service during your stay.”

It was Harry’s turn to turn wide-eyed. “Like a footman?”

“I do not... I was not told I would handle your feet.”

Harry studied him for a second, trying to decide if the boy had made a joke or not, before he cracked a smile. “No, no. Footman is a, huh...” He frowned as he racked his brain for the translation, trying to conjure up the memory of his vocabulary notebooks. “ _ Un serviteur _ ,” he finally said, hoping he had landed on the right word and had not accidentally called him a slave.

The boy thought it over for a moment before he nodded. “ _ Valet de pied, je crois _ . No, I am not your footman. More like... a  _ guide _ . A companion, maybe. Mister Styles requested it personally.”

“Ah. A chaperone, then. Yes, that does sound like my father.”

Shifting on his feet, the boy shrugged. “My name is Louis,  _ en tout cas _ .”

“A French boy named Louis, how original,” Harry replied before he could stop it, immediately cursing his mind and its propensity for insolence whenever he was upset with his father, indirectly or not. “I’m Harry.”

The corner of Louis’ mouth twitched in a barely repressed smirk. “And is this not another name for Henry? From one king to another, I say you should not be so quick to judge.”

“At least I kept my head,” Harry shot back, trying to keep a straight face though his heart raced to have pierced through Louis’ façade.

“But took so many others. And I am your  _ chaperon _ , so I think you should not argue with me.”

“You are  _ not _ my chaperone. You said it, you are my guide.”

“No, no, I like  _ chaperon _ . Maybe I’ll come back with a red cape to really show who I am.”

Harry opened his mouth to reply, shutting it with a frown when he came up blank. “A... red cape?”

“Do they not teach fairy tales to English children?  _ Le petit chaperon rouge _ ? The little girl who went into the forest and met a wolf?” Louis replied, disbelief lacing his voice, his hands finally unclasping from behind his back to wave through the air as he spoke.

“ _ Little Red Riding Hood _ ...? Is she truly called a chaperone in French?” The French made no sense, Harry decided. He shook his head. “The French make no sense.” 

“ _ Chaperon  _ has two meanings. I was making a, huh,  _ jeu de mots _ . Forget it.” Louis shrugged and let his eyes wander around the room and they fell on Harry once more, for a second before jumping away to look at the wall behind him. “Your bags will be here, soon, for... clothes.”

“Right, yes.” Harry wrapped his arms around his torso, tightening the robe around his body in the same move. Louis’ gaze, a moment ago, left him flustered. To see the boy look away made him remember he was nearly naked, made the tension in the air obvious.

He nodded, feeling awkward and stupid, and headed for the fireplace, sinking into an armchair, seeking warmth. He glanced at Louis as he sat, finding him still standing in the same spot, motionless.

“I’m not French, you know,” he finally said, breaking the silence just as Harry was beginning to feel its weight. “You keep talking like you think I’m from France.”

“I just meant, you speak French, so...” Harry replied, unsure how to react. He hoped he had not accidentally insulted the boy; though he hated to say anything nice about his father, he was glad of the possibility to have a friend by his side for the next few weeks.

“But I’m not from France.” Louis took a tentative step closer. “I was born here.”

Harry nodded. “I’m sorry if I insulted you. I just... I was referring to the French language in general, I was not assuming anything about your... your heritage.” He was flustered, embarrassingly so, and he turned his eyes to the fireplace, hoping that the glow of the flames would hide his reddened cheeks.

“I know, I know, I’m just saying.”

“In any case,” Harry continued, amazed that he was still talking, why in the world was he  _ still talking _ ? “Your English is much better than my French.”

“You don’t have a French father,” Louis replied. When Harry turned to glance at him, he continued. “My last name is Tomlinson. My father was British, actually.”

“Was...” Harry replied, the word weighing heavy on his heart. “I’m sorry. What—”

“The war,” Louis cut in, pressing his lips together. “What else, really?” He shrugged. “In 1918. A month before the  _ Armistice _ .”

“I’m truly sorry,” he repeated, unsure what else there was to say.

Louis shrugged once more and waved his hand around, as though pushing the thoughts away. “It was a long time ago.” He smiled and took another step closer. “Is there... something you want to do? Dinner is in a few hours.”

“Without my clothes, I’d rather stay here,” Harry fought against a smile, yet the corner of his lips quirked up despite his best efforts.

“Are you sure? I think you would make an impression on the other guests.”

Harry’s smile bloomed at Louis’ reply, delighted that he was comfortable enough to joke with him. A stiff companion might actually have been worse than none at all.

“Ah, but I would freeze to death before that.”

Louis rolled his eyes. “It’s not  _ that _ cold. We heat the hotel, you know.”

“Not nearly enough.” Harry huffed, half of it for show.

“Well, look at that coat!” Louis replied, picking up the trench coat Harry had left on the bed when he arrived. “This is a joke! This is a... an October coat!”

“This coat is from Savile Row, please show some respect,” Harry replied, still smiling, now fully teasing Louis.

“Well, good for him, but you will die in this here.”

“ _ It _ ,” Harry corrected before he could stop it, the word tumbling out. When Louis’ amusement turned to confusion, his brows knitted together, Harry grimaced. “Sorry. Very pompous of me. It’s an object... objects are  _ it _ , not  _ him _ .”

It was Louis’ turn to huff, his eyes rolling once more. “ _ Bon, monsieur l’Anglais qui me donne des leçons de grammaire maintenant, j’aimerais bien vous voir essayer d’avoir une conversation complète avec moi en français _ ,” he said quickly, much too fast for Harry to be able to cling to the shreds of French lessons he could remember, and the smug, satisfied smile on his face told Harry he was perfectly aware of that.

“I said I was sorry! I’m a pompous English bourgeois, this is what we do!”

“ _ Bourgeois _ ,” Louis replied, lifting his eyebrows. “It’s pronounced  _ bourgeois _ .”

Harry kept a straight face for a second before he burst out laughing, shaking his head. “Touche.”

“Oh,  _ monsieur _ , you make this too easy. It’s  _ touché _ .” 

“Fine, I give up! I’ll shut up, now, you win!”

“Of course I win.” Still smiling smugly, Louis remembered the coat in his hand. “Right! This is no better than a cardigan in winter here! When you have your clothes, we’ll go and get you something better.”

“I noticed the hotel’s boutique in the lobby, yes. I was going to go have a look for a better coat.”

Louis shook his head. “No, no. Overpriced and very...” he frowned, searching for the word, “ _ coureur des bois _ , huh, I think it’s fur trader?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Harry lied, nodding emphatically to sell the pretense that he knew what Louis meant. “I don’t want that.”

“You will look like a tourist if you do. I will go see where your bags are, wait here.”

“We already established that I should not leave the room in this state, I believe.”

Louis snorted a laugh and nodded. “Don’t drown, then.”

“I promise I will not leave this chair until you’ve come back to make sure I don’t accidentally kill myself and upset my father.”

Harry watched him leave and let out a sigh, running a hand through his hair as he did. His heart was already going wild over this boy, and how cliché would it be to have a holiday romance? He needed to rein it in, needed to be strong and not let his emotions get the better of him.

In the back of his mind, before he could muzzle it, he heard Louis’ voice correcting him that it was pronounced  _ cliché _ . 

He groaned out loud. He was screwed.

* * *

Harry had drifted back to sleep by the fireplace by the time Louis came back, carrying two bundles in his arms and followed by another bellhop bringing in his bags.

“Coats!” Louis only said, dropping his load on the bed and smiling at Harry. “I borrowed one from a cook, I promised to bring it back before tonight.”

Blinking a few times to brush off the cobwebs of sleep, Harry sat up straighter in the chair, his back and neck protesting his choice to sleep sitting up. When he said nothing, Louis continued, his enthusiasm almost jarring against the treacle of Harry’s mind.

“We are going to buy a coat for you, a real one good for winter here, come on. There is still an hour of sunlight, let’s not waste it.”

With a glance at the clock on the mantle, Harry saw that it was just after three. He sighed and nodded, rubbing a hand down his face. This accidental nap had been of the bad kind, the ones that left him feeling disoriented and upset, like he had been woken up in the middle of the night and thrown out of bed. He yawned, covering his mouth with the back of his hand, dreading the thought of getting away from the warm glow of the fire.

“Could I have some tea--no, no, this calls for coffee.” Harry cleared his throat, his voice rusted with sleep. “Please.”

“ _ Tu as entendu, fait monter du café pour monsieur. Merci, _ ” Louis told the bellhop, waiting for him to leave the room before plopping down in the other armchair, still smiling at Harry. “It is becoming a routine, you sleeping and me waking you up.”

“It’s been a long week.” Harry yawned again. 

“You will have a good night. Oh!” Louis sprung up and headed for Harry’s baggage. “You have to get dressed. May I?” he asked, hands lingering by the clasps of a suitcase.

Harry nodded and gladly took the excuse to linger a moment more in the chair to watch Louis tear through his belongings to cobble together an outfit he deemed suitable for the weather. He laid out a pair of itchy wool trousers and a thick sweater, rummaging a while longer until he pulled out a button-up shirt and two pairs of socks.

“You can put all of this on,” he said, motioning to the clothes laid out on the bed. “Especially the two pairs of socks. We will find you boots, too.” Louis patted the bed twice and then headed for the door. “I will go get that coffee, you change. No more sleep!” he added, pointing a threatening finger at Harry before grinning and leaving the room.

Pulling himself out of the chair was the hardest part, his limbs aching from too many days and nights of discomfort, but once he was on his feet and had momentum, he managed to pull on everything Louis had chosen, shrugging on the heavy coat as a final touch. It smelled of cigarettes and fried onions, making him scrunch up his nose.

There was a knock at the door before Louis walked in. It was becoming obvious to Harry that Louis completely disregarded the thought that he should wait to be let in. He was carrying a tray with a steaming cup of coffee, along with a few biscuits on it, and carefully placed it down on the desk before he turned to Harry. His eyes widened for a second, or at least Harry thought he saw them widen, before his usual smile split his face.

“Very handsome,  _ monsieur _ . And a lot more ready to go out in the cold. Now, drink that coffee and we will go before the sun goes to bed.” He winced. “Sorry. Sets. Before the sun sets, I know that one.”

Harry’s heart gave a flutter at Louis’ charming mistake and he hid his smile behind the rim of the cup, though his eyes did not leave him. “The sun goes to bed in French?”

“Well, he–it, huh...  _ il se couche _ . It lies down. We say the same about people when they go to bed, it’s like,  _ je vais me coucher _ , it means ‘I am going to bed’.”

“And does the moon wake up?”

“No, no, that one is the same.  _ Elle se lève _ .”

“It’s a she?”

Louis shrugged. “I don’t make the rules of grammar.”

The coffee felt good, warming Harry from the inside and promising to clear the fog in his mind, and he placed down the half empty cup before grabbing a biscuit for the road. “All right, I’m ready.”

“Great!” Louis grabbed the second coat he had brought up earlier and shrugged it on before wrapping a blue and green plaid scarf around his neck. Reaching into the pockets of the coat, he produced a second scarf, a plain grey knitted one. “For you.”

Louis stepped up to Harry, close enough that Harry could smell his cologne in a heady wave of musk and spice. He wrapped the scarf around Harry’s neck, careful to place it just right around his face and tuck in the ends into the opening of the coat.

“I have a hat for your delicate English ears, too,” Louis said, dropping his voice now that he was so close, producing a matching knitted hat from the seemingly bottomless pockets of his coat, “but I worry it would mess up your curls.”

Harry’s breath hitched in his throat to have Louis this close, to hear his voice come out in a low, soft almost-whisper, and he swallowed with a shrug. 

“I’ll risk it,” he replied, matching his tone, meeting his gaze for a second before he looked down—

Straight at Louis’ lips and his eyes jumped away once more, settling on the wall behind Louis as he tried to control the hammering of his heart while the boy placed the hat on his head, pulling it down to cover his ears and fixing the curls around the hem.

“There you go,  _ monsieur _ . There should be mittens in your pockets.”

Louis moved back, taking two steps backwards before he turned for the door. “Let’s go! It is almost the sun’s bedtime!” He cast a glance at Harry over his shoulder and winked before sauntering towards the door.

Though his knees had been turned to jelly by the wink, Harry followed and stood by him in front of the golden-plated doors of the elevator. Their reflection showed him how silly he looked with only the tip of his nose and his eyes peeking out of the bundle of wool Louis had turned him into. The coat was too wide in the shoulders, made for a man broader than he was, and it only added to the ridicule of his silhouette. He let out a small laugh.

“What?” Louis asked, holding the door of the elevator for him.

“I look like I’m being swallowed whole by a snake made of wool.”

Louis laughed, too, and held out his hands to the side, shaking them as he said, “Welcome to winter!”

Harry’s heart tightened at the sight, fluttering with interest for the boy and his humorous energy. He tried to control his eyes, to stop them from lingering for too long on the fine, sharp profile of his face, the perfect slope of his nose or his perfectly coiffed hair while they rode the elevator down. 

Louis was unlike anyone he had ever met, having none of the stiff poise of men in his social circles. He was irreverent and teased Harry like they were schoolyard friends— _ more _ than if they were schoolyard friends, because in Harry’s world, even children kept a sense of decorum in their playtime. Perhaps it was because no one had ever talked to Harry the way Louis was, but in that instant, as he stepped out into the cold and watched as the late afternoon sun bathed Louis in a warm, almost golden glow, Harry thought he might follow Louis to the ends of the world if he asked with a joke and a wink.

“You see? It’s not so bad when you have a real coat on!” Louis said, leading the way down the pavement out of the hotel’s courtyard, snow crunching underneath his boots.

“It’s still too cold,” Harry replied, sticking to the unspoken script between them. It was his role to be the grumpy tourist, and it was Louis’ role to be the overly-enthusiastic guide. It might also be safer for Harry’s yearning heart to stay within strict boundaries.

“Please!” Louis laughed. “We’re not even at the solstice, yet! It’s still  _ fall _ .”

Harry snorted, rolled his eyes, took the bait. “It can’t possibly get colder?”

“January and Febr--Febuar-- _ février _ , it can go down as low as -35, and feel even colder with the wind.”

“These don’t sound like real numbers.”

With a chuckle, Louis pushed his arm. “Spoken like a proper pampered posh British boy.”

Despite the several layers separating Louis’ hand from Harry’s arm—the mitten, the coat, the sweater and the shirt—the touch made Harry’s desperate, wild heart perk up. Harry took a couple of steps to the side to exaggerate Louis’ push, proud to see him smile.

“Nice alliteration.”

“I tell you, it’s only my mouth that makes it sound like I don’t know grammar.”

Harry fixed his gaze forward to the narrow street stretching before them, the tall houses tiptoeing at the edge of the pavement like an embrace around them.

Anything so he would not look back at Louis’ mouth, gaze drawn by Louis’ mention of it. He would not look at it, taking in the line of his lips and the omnipresent quirk at their corner, always slightly amused at whatever was happening. 

He would focus on the architecture, conjure up what he learned back in school, the Canadian colonial style or whatever it might be called, and he would not look back at the boy until his mad heart had gone back to rest. 

He was being too hopeful, though, to think that his heart would settle down after the initial burst of interest.  _ It has been so long _ , it whispered,  _ so long since someone like him came along, and wouldn’t it be nice to give in? _

Led by his treacherous heart, Harry spent the rest of their outing increasingly flustered, the ordeal made worse once he started trying on coats and having to listen to Louis’ comments about the cut of them and the width of Harry’s shoulders, about his height and his colouring. It was not Harry’s first time listening to a tailor discuss his body like he was not there to hear it, but Louis’ presence and input brought back memories of his time on Savile Row, back in his school days, with his sweetheart of the time, and his poor heart beat that much harder.

The sun had set by the time they were back on the streets and gas lights twinkled around them, their flames making the blanket of snow glitter like stars. Storefronts decorated for Christmas added to the whimsical ambiance, and though Harry would never admit it, he was seeing the appeal of a snowy Christmas, everything looking like it had been taken straight out of a fairytale. 

More than once, Louis had to grab Harry’s arm and steer him to safety when he did not notice patches of ice or other obstacles in his path, too busy looking at everything but the ground before his feet. 

“ _ Tête en l’air _ ,” Louis commented when he stopped Harry from walking into the path of a passing automobile and though Harry did not understand the phrase itself, Louis’ tone made him laugh, halfway between charmed and self-conscious.

Louis left him by the door of his room, promising to be back the next day with his new coat and a list of activities for Harry to choose from. Harry watched him walk away, rushing to clumsily unlock his door when Louis looked back to him as he waited for the elevator. Harry hurried into the room, shut the door and leaned on it, closing his eyes with a sigh. 

Maybe he would have been safer going to New York, after all. 

* * *

Whatever plans Louis might have had for them flew out the window in the next few days when Harry’s father made him—forced him, really—to follow him as he attended meetings, saying that it was about time Harry learned about the business so he could take over some day. Though he shadowed his father begrudgingly, staring longingly out the windows at the blue sky, wishing he was anywhere else, a part of his mind was grateful for the time it gave him to sort out his thoughts when it came to Louis.

It was silly to let himself get hung up on a boy he had met for only a handful of hours. It was a recipe for disaster to hope for a holiday romance, it would only lead to heartbreak and he knew it, knew his fickle heart and its tendency to hold on too tightly to fleeting things, and he had to protect himself from it. It was  _ better _ that he was following his father from meetings in smoke-filled rooms to stiff lunches, the stench of cigars clinging to his clothes a reminder of what he was meant for, but it did not mean he enjoyed it. 

Despite the danger, he would still rather spend time with his new friend, beyond sense or reason.

Yet, whenever he happened to walk by Louis in a hallway, his heart somersaulted and he would stutter a greeting, the surprise of seeing him robbing him of his brains. Louis would wink and comment something disarmingly charming, like ‘you’re keeping yourself out of trouble without your  _ chaperon _ ,  _ monsieur _ ?’ and Harry would only manage to laugh and nod before walking off, wondering whether the fall from the windows would be enough to kill him and save him from how embarrassing he was.

A part of him wondered whether he was expected to call for Louis’ presence in the evening, but he did not want to risk keeping him at work longer than usual for something as silly as keeping him company. Besides, Harry liked his quiet evenings curled up by the fire, the winter wind singing outside the windows while he sipped on a hot chocolate, a notebook balanced on the arm of the chair and what he hoped was good poetry etched onto it. Writing was his escape, his only way of coping with the corporate life he was being forcefully pushed into, and he relished any moment he could have enough quiet time by himself to put some words to the paper.

After a few days of the new routine, Harry already getting used to this new life that he would, soon enough, have to submit to, one morning brought a heavy snowstorm and an announcement from his father that he would rather not venture out in this godforsaken weather, setting Harry free for the day. Working hard to hide how giddy it made him, his heart swelling at the possibility of spending the day with Louis, Harry stopped an employee of the hotel to ask them to fetch Louis,  _ s’il-vous-plaît et merci _ , telling them to send Louis up to his room when his family was done with breakfast. 

Hurrying upstairs to change out of his austere business attire to slip into a sweater and comfortable slacks, Harry sat by the fire to wait for the knock at the door, his excitation making his fingers numb. So much for keeping his heart in check, he thought with a roll of his eyes.

The traitor in his chest went wild when the knock came and he stayed put, sure Louis would let himself in like he had on the first day. He waited a few seconds and heard the telltale sound of a key turning in the lock, smiling when Louis walked in.

“Oh, you’re there. I wasn’t sure you were.”

“So you let yourself in?” Harry asked, fighting against the grin that would not leave his face, turning what he wanted to be a teasing comment into a joke.

“I cannot change old habits.” Louis mirrored his grin as he crossed the room to stand behind the free armchair, his hands on the back of it. “So,  _ monsieur _ , you asked for me? Did you want an expedition out in the storm?”

Harry snorted a laugh, shaking his head. “No, just company.”

Louis pressed his lips together against an obvious smile and he nodded. “Can I sit?”

“I don’t know, can you?” Harry replied before he could stop it, his breath hitching, hoping he had not accidentally pressed one of Louis’ buttons and ruined his good mood.

“ _ Bon, bon, si monsieur veut jouer à ce jeu, on va jouer. _ ” Louis circled the chair and sat down, lifting an eyebrow at Harry. “ _ Vous avez été très occupé dans les derniers jours, je me suis senti complètement inutile comme chaperon, vous n’avez pas eu besoin de moi _ .”

“No, please!” Harry laughed. “I’m sorry!”

“ _ Oh, monsieur est désolé! Eh bien, monsieur n’avait qu’à y penser à deux fois avant de se moquer de moi! Ça se parade, tout fier de reprendre les gens dans leur deuxième langue alors que ça n’en parle qu’une seule! _ ” Louis was smiling, speaking too fast for Harry’s meager grasp of French to be of any use, and something about the sparkle in his eyes told Harry that he was being mocked.

Reaching in his pocket, Harry pulled out his handkerchief and waved it in the air. “I surrender! Truce, please!”

“Very rude of you to reference war to someone whose father died in one.”

Harry froze, eyes opening wide under his panic. “Oh no! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean--” he stopped when Louis burst out laughing. “Oh, you’re cruel!”

His hand flew to his chest, to press over the wild beating of his heart, confused whether it was panic, or shame, or another word he dared not utter.

“You make it too easy!”

“And you play dirty!” Harry protested, still trying to reel in his emotions.

Louis shrugged, glancing at Harry for a second before looking back at the fire roaring in the hearth. “All is fair in love and war.”

“Which—” Harry stopped short, the words catching in his throat. He did not have the courage to ask which one Louis had meant, his fickle Romantic-with-a-capital-R heart already yearning for the former though they barely knew each other. 

“Well. I seem to recall that I asked for a truce,” he said instead.

“All right. I’ll stop teasing you. For now, at least.” Louis stretched and settled more comfortably in the chair, his entire body relaxing and reminding Harry of the house cat they had when he was young who would spend hours sleeping by the fireplace. “You know, I was worried you would want to go out in the storm, thinking that it would be a good Canadian experience or whatever tourists like.”

Harry scoffed, shook his head. “Did you already forget that I hate the cold and won’t stop whinging about it?”

“I only had the privilege of spending a few hours with you, I think I’m allowed to forget small details.”

“I would hardly call my constant whinging small details, but I appreciate your tactful answer.”

“Hm.” Louis glanced at him again and Harry could almost see him rearing up for another one of his playful attacks. He braced himself, heart fluttering in expectation. “It was either that or calling you a useless aristocrat who would not survive winter, but I thought you might prefer the polite one.”

Harry pressed his lips together against a smile, trying to keep his face stoic, trying not to show that he relished Louis’ jabs. “I’m not an aristocrat. I don’t have any titles.”

Louis cocked his head to the side, looking genuinely surprised. “You don’t? I... must have misunderstood, I thought you were.”

“No, no. My father acts like he’s the Prince of Wales, but that’s just how he is. We’re—” Harry lowered his voice, glancing around in a conspiratorial way, “new money, actually.” He pressed a finger to his lips, shushing Louis.

“Why do you make it sound like it’s a crime? I’m confused. It’s bad to be rich?”

“It’s bad to be a  _ new _ rich family. We didn’t inherit the riches, my grandfather acquired them through hard work and investments. That’s not proper,” Harry took on a posh accent, though he wondered idly if Louis would even notice the difference or if English all sounded the same to him, like he suspected French all sounded the same to his own ears.

“Again, it’s bad to make your own fortune?”

“We’re not  _ Americans _ ,” Harry continued in the same affected tone. “It’s quite uncouth to work for people of a certain standing. Quite common, for one to have a job.”

“I don’t know that word, sorry, but yes, it  _ is _ common to have a job? Everyone I know has one.” Louis’ brows were furrowed, either in confusion or irritation at what Harry was saying, he could not tell.

“Uncouth? It means uncultured, unbecoming of a proper rich person. And I meant common as in commoners.” A word appeared from the depths of his memory and he smiled, excited to use French for Louis. “I think you would say  _ la plèbe _ !”

“ _ Plébéien _ . I get it.” Louis sighed. “Rich people are very bad people.”

“Indeed they are. So many rules about how to behave, how to  _ be _ . I don’t get to choose anything about my life. Even this... I’m here to learn how to be my father.” Harry tightened his jaw, holding back the flow of complaints before it got out of hand. He knew that if he got started, he would not be able to stop.

“Me too. I can’t choose,” Louis replied. He gave Harry a half-smile when he glanced over. “I need to work to make money to survive. I could not go to school after my father died, so it’s... this is the best job I ever had, it’s not so... back breaking. I can sit by the fire and spend time with a nice person. But when you leave, I go back to carrying baggage.”

“Why did they choose you to spend time with me?”

Louis shrugged. “I speak English. You should not feel trapped. You are not. You can travel and have dreams.”

“Well, yeah, of course, I have dreams, but they’re bigger than what my father wants for me.”

“What do you dream of?”

Harry licked his lips and shrugged, staring down at his hands. He rarely talked about it out loud, feeling foolish that he even entertained such ideas. “I would like to be a writer. Of-...of poetry.”

“And why can’t you be?”

“I have to be a businessman.”

“You can be both. You will have time for both, no?”

Harry shrugged. “I suppose, though my life will not be very inspiring for poetry.” He sighed, shook his head to clear away the images of a dull, gray life spent in board meetings and cigar rooms, miles away from the stuff of poetry. “Enough about my silly dreams. What about you, then?”

“What about me?” Louis was staring ahead, his eyes fixed on the fire, his fingers tapping a rhythm on the arm of the chair.

“What are your dreams?”

He was silent for a moment before he replied, never once looking over at Harry. “A warm place where to live, food on the table, never being worried about money.”

“I asked for your dreams, Louis.” Harry replied, rolling his eyes with a smile at Louis’ avoidance. “How shameful must they be if you’re hiding them? I told you I want to be a poet, it doesn’t get worse than that.”

Louis visibly stiffened, his back becoming straight, his earlier relaxation completely gone. “I told you my dreams.”

“It’s not...” Harry began, only to stop mid-sentence. It dawned on him that Louis had not been avoiding the truth, not at all. He had been honest, admitting that for him, dreaming was limited to having the bare necessities.

The memory of his rant from earlier made bile rise in his throat as shame turned his blood cold. He had spoken like the terrible rich people they were mocking minutes earlier, complaining that he could not spend his life in contemplative idleness because he had to take a high paying, high powered job from his father to inherit the family fortune. He swallowed thickly and looked down.

“Sorry,” Harry said. “I’m one of these terrible rich people, it seems.”

“It’s okay,” Louis replied, though there was an icy edge to his tone. “I don’t expect you to understand. I have brothers and sisters, you see, many of them. And I help my mother with money, so everything is... life is expensive. With Christmas so close, I want to give them presents, so I saved all the money I could spare for months now and... It’s not a bad life, I want for nothing, and don’t  _ have _ to give them presents, but... they deserve something.”

“I can help.” The words tumbled out of Harry’s mouth before he even realised he meant to say them.

“I don’t need charity,” Louis replied sharply. “I did not tell you this for your pity.”

“It’s not pity! It’s not pity to want to help give children Christmas presents!”

“You barely know me and you don’t know them.”

Harry shrugged. “It’s Christmas.”

Louis was silent for a long time, emotions that Harry could not identify passing over his face. “It’s not charity?” he finally asked, looking at Harry for the first time since the difficult subject had been broached. 

“It’s not. I’ll even put in a condition, if it makes you feel better.” At Louis’ frown, Harry immediately continued. “I want to meet them.”

Louis’ eyes widened and he looked away, back to the fire as though it held all of the answers he was looking for. “I suppose... we always have a big celebration for the New Year. Everyone we know is invited. You could...” Louis shook his head. “It will not be a fancy ball with a twelve course meal.”

“I don’t want a fancy ball with a twelve course meal. I will have that for Christmas, already. I want... well, I’m curious, now. I would love to come to the celebration, if it would not be a bother.”

“Maman will go crazy to know that a rich Englishman is coming, but yes. You are welcome to come.”

Harry smiled, broad and bright, his heart beating faster for an entirely different reason this time. He might still get the boisterous party he imagined he might get if he had gone to New York, and though it would lack the glamour of the big city, well—it would have Louis.

Looking over to him for a moment, Harry used the opportunity of Louis’ attention being focused on the fire to let his gaze travel over Louis’ fine features, Harry found his mind wandering to dangerous realms, where he reached across the space between them to pull Louis into a kiss, where the bed, so conveniently close, welcomed them and they--

He swallowed and looked away, standing up to make his way to the desk, picking up the room service menu. “Let’s order too much food and too many drinks and weather this storm, shall we?”

Louis turned to grin at him. “I’m not supposed to drink on the job,” he said, though his tone clearly indicated that he did not mind bending this rule.

“Well, as my  _ chaperon _ , it would be rude of you not to accompany me.” Harry sat down and crossed his legs, slumping in the armchair and taking on the attitude of a blasé dandy filled with ennui, though his grin matched Louis’. “I was thinking we should try everything on the menu.”

Louis’ eyes widened and he let out a small cough. “That is a  _ lot _ of food.”

“We have a very long day ahead of us and we’re two young lads with appetites to match, aren’t we? And we need something to soak up all of the cocktails I’m planning on ordering up, too.”

It was only when Harry was done talking that the real meaning of Louis’ sentence revealed itself to him: by food he had meant money, and by talking about ordering so much food, Harry might appear to be making a spectacle of his wealth, moments after saying he would buy Louis’ family presents for Christmas. He was so used to spending all of his time with friends as obscenely rich as he was that he had forgotten that it might appear in poor taste to someone looking in from the outside.

He pressed his lips together and pretended to peruse the menu, though his mind was busy trying to find a way to backpedal out of this terrible faux pas. 

“It  _ is _ a lot of food, is it not? I didn’t notice the menu was printed on both sides.” He hummed and hawed, putting on a show and making a poor job of it, before he shrugged. “Maybe we should limit our extravagance. Let’s sample all of the appetizers and desserts, but limit ourselves to one main dish. And a bottle of wine, to begin.”

He glanced up at Louis and shrugged, silently asking for his permission to place the order.

“I heard great things about the duck,” Louis replied, looking over at Harry though his eyes stayed on the wall just beyond Harry’s shoulder.

“One  _ canard _ ,” Harry said proudly, “and one...  _ agneau _ , then.”

“Why did they teach farm animal names to  _ un petit bourgeois _ like you, but you struggle with the rest?” Louis asked and the tease was back in his tone, untying the knot that had lodged itself in Harry’s stomach.

“That’s where you’re mistaken. I was taught  _ food _ words so I can order in fancy restaurants like here where the menus are in French.”

“Of course,” Louis replied, rolling his eyes. “It’s my mistake to think you learned something normal.”

“I’d never dare go against your expectations of a useless rich boy like me,” Harry replied and made his way to the telephone to place the order. “Red or white? Your wine?” Harry waved his hand before Louis could reply. “Obviously red, with what we’re eating. Silly me.”

Harry turned his back on Louis to place the order, wondering why it was that he stopped being awkward around Louis the moment he slipped into the role of the young, rich heir with more money than common sense, and why he had felt the need to go there in the first place. It wasn’t  _ him _ , though it was the most comfortable skin for him to wear, the one where the script had already been written and he could just play along. 

Perhaps it was self-defence, he thought as he carefully explained that yes, he did mean every appetizer on the menu. Louis had been wary of his offer to buy presents, seeing it as a charity, making it clear to Harry that he did not see him as a friend willing to help, but as an employer extending a small kindness, and it pushed Harry back into the trenches of his social persona. 

With a sigh, he handed the phone to Louis. “I need your help. You have to explain to him in French, he’s not understanding me.”

“What did I say about being taught something useful?” Louis commented as he joined Harry by the phone, picking it up and placing the order, not without letting his hand graze over Harry’s back as he made the transition, sending shivers down Harry’s spine.

Reeling from the unexpected touch, the ghost of it lingering on his skin, Harry watched him and wondered if Louis also had different identities depending on the situations. He was not so naive to think that the Louis he knew was the one who went home to his family, but he wondered if it was the same with every client of the hotel, or if, perhaps, he had unlocked a unique aspect of Louis by being, he hoped, a friendly figure. He could not imagine that Louis teased regular clients the way he seemed to relish teasingHarry. 

He hoped he was special to Louis because Louis had grown to be special to him.

Grimacing at his own hopeless infatuation, Harry walked up to one of the windows and looked out at the storm outside, the visibility almost null this high up in the air, the wind howling ghoulishly. He heard Louis hang up the phone, then his footsteps to join him and he glanced over his shoulder to smile at him. 

“They got it?”

“They were still skeptical of the order, but yes. It will be here soon.” Louis stepped up closer to the window and frowned. “I don’t know how I’ll get home tonight.”

“Do you live far away from the hotel?”

Louis rolled his eyes, but he was smiling as he did so. “Of course, I do. No one who works here can afford to live around here. I live in the  _ Basse-Ville _ .”

“Where’s that? Is it very far from here?”

“It’s...” Louis’ frown deepened as he thought it through. “It’s  _ lower _ from here. We’re very high above the city--I don’t mean this floor of the hotel, but the area. I live in the part that is lower than here, closer to the river. The stairs are dangerous on bad winter days like today.”

“Can’t you stay at the hotel? Don’t they care about the dangers?”

Louis shrugged. “Maybe they will offer us to pay for an empty room to sleep in. I can’t--” He pressed his lips together. “I don’t, usually.”

“I don’t like the idea of you out in the storm tonight.”

Louis shrugged once more and then pushed his shoulder against Harry’s. “It’s not my first storm, you know.”

“Still,” Harry replied, playing at being stubborn to hide his worries. “Hopefully it’ll stop before you have to go home.”

Harry turned to sit back by the fire, but Louis stopped him with a hand on his arm, plunging his eyes in his, his gaze intense in its sincerity. 

“Thank you for caring,” he said, nodding with emphasis.

“Oh-of course,” Harry stuttered, a blush creeping up his cheeks at the intensity of Louis’ gaze. “You’re my friend.”

“Am I? I don’t remember that we talked about this.” Louis slipped back into their comfortable script and broke the tension before Harry wondered whether he might burst from it. “Sure. I’ll be your friend, if you insist.”

The food arrived soon after and they spread it out across the room, placing dishes on every available surface. The wine was good, almost too good, and it went down like water as they talked and ate their way through the day. One more bottle was ordered up and they opened up about their lives in ways, Harry was sure, they both never had before, the alcohol and the cosy feeling of being trapped in by snow, comfortably warm by a fire, breaking down walls and letting words flow out, uncensored.

Harry talked and talked about his frustration with his life until he could not stand the sound of his own voice, drifting off into silence and letting Louis take over, listening to him as he opened up about his family’s financial struggles in a way he had not dared earlier, offering Harry the unfiltered version of their hardship and letting his bitterness and anger slip through the cracks of his usually smooth façade. 

Beyond the windows, the snow never let up even as the sun went down and plunged them in darkness, the only light coming from the fire that Louis kept stoking, increasingly unsteady on his feet as he moved about the room.

Harry felt loose and unmoored, nothing quite tangible around where he was slumped into his armchair, a giggle never far from spilling from his lips. He was well into drunk territory, in a way he had not been in a very long time, not since his school days, and the thought alone made him laugh to himself.

“What’s so funny?” Louis asked, falling rather than sitting back in his chair after one of his trips to the fireplace.

“How drunk I am. I am  _ so _ drunk. Unbecomingly so, I’m afraid.”

“Oh! Good, good.  _ Moi aussi _ .”

“Oh,  _ vous aussi _ , hm?” Harry parroted, giggling without reason.

“ _ Tu _ . I mean,  _ toi. _ You can use... that.” Louis waved his hand around. “We are past politeness,  _ monsieur _ .”

Harry snorted. “Then stop calling me  _ monsieur _ .  _ Monsieur _ Styles is my father. I’m Harry. Please and thank you.” He kicked out his leg to push Louis’ with his foot. “ _ Merci _ .”

Their eyes met and Louis rolled his eyes, yet despite his inebriation, Harry was sure he saw something almost like fondness on his face as he did so. It made his fickle heart go faster with hope and he sprung up to his feet in an attempt to ignore it.

“You can’t go out in this,” Harry declared, wobbling his way to a window to try and peer out of it. He was only met with a reflection of his own disheveled appearance. He stuck out his tongue and laughed at the sight, momentarily distracted.

“I don’t want to!”

Harry turned to look at Louis when he replied, pouting his lips at the sight of Louis’ comfortable position in the armchair, curled up on himself, sleeves rolled up against the warmth from the fire and the alcohol, and he could not imagine letting him go out in a storm. Beyond the dangers of it, it would also just be cruel to tear him out of a warm room and throw him out in the cold and the wind.

“Then don’t. You can stay here.”

Louis frowned. “I couldn’t.”

“Why not?” Harry headed back to his chair, sitting down in it with a dramatic flourish. “I’m offering, you want to do it, can we skip the few minutes of back and forth pretend-argument where I try to convince you to stay? Because I’m very tired.”

In the back of his mind, he was aware that he was once more slipping back into his comfortable role of the benevolent rich man distributing favours around him because he could and he sat up straighter in the chair, trying to push away the bad reflexes. 

“Harry,” Louis said, and it was the first time he said the name, his accent chipping away at the H, making it sound like  _ ‘Arry _ , and Harry swallowed, filing away how this made him feel to be dealt with later. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure I don’t want to send you off to your death.” Harry shook his head, hating the reply that came to him first. “I mean, I am sure, yes, that I would love to keep you here for the night, safe and sound.”

Louis pressed his lips together for a moment, eyes drifting off to stare at a point behind Harry, and he nodded. “I can sleep in the chair.”

With a roll of his eyes, Harry snorted, putting on a show of nonchalance despite the hammering of his heart. “Don’t be thick. The bed is big enough for two people.”

“But it’s not...” Louis began, frowning.

“Proper?” Harry shrugged. “Neither is letting my friend sleep in a  _ chair _ .”

Louis’ frown held for a moment longer before he sighed and nodded, closing his eyes. “Fine. Okay. I will sleep here. But I have to let my mother know I’m not coming home.” He stood up and headed for the phone, holding on to the furniture to steady his steps.

Harry glanced at the clock on the mantle and saw that it was a little after nine. It was still early for bed, but he could feel the first tendrils of sleep pulling at the edges of his mind and he longed to be horizontal and warm in bed. He stood up and rummaged through the chest of drawers for pyjamas, grabbing a second pair for Louis and laying it out on the bed. He made his way to the bathroom and splashed water on his face to try and dissipate some of the alcoholic fog before he changed and turned to head back, stopping with his hand on the doorknob. He stopped to listen if Louis was still on the telephone, but heard nothing.

“Can I come out?” he asked.

“A minute!”

Turning to the mirror to pass the time, Harry looked at himself, plunging his gaze into his reflection like only a drunk would, taking in his reddened cheeks and glassy eyes before trying to fix his hair, gripped with the urge to make himself desirable to Louis. The thought alone deepened the colour on his cheek, adding embarrassment to the flush of alcohol, and he looked away, shook his head. 

“I’m ready!” Louis called and Harry left the bathroom, finding Louis standing by the bed, his uniform neatly folded on it.

Harry’s pyjamas, tailored to his own frame, were just on the edge of too big for Louis, the sleeves coming down past his wrists, the legs bunching up at his ankles and the shoulder seams off-center. Looking away quickly, Harry went to prepare his side of the bed, removing the decorative pillows and folding the covers over. Silently, Louis mirrored his actions and sat in bed, slipping his legs in and getting comfortable against the pillows.

Silence settled around him, weighing down on Harry until he could not hold back the nervous laugh that bubbled out of his lips. 

“We’re in bed before ten. At our age!” he said to try and justify his incongruous laughter.

“Hm, well, we have had too much to drink,  _ mon ami _ .” Louis slumped lower against the pillow, leaning his head back against them and closing his eyes. “And I usually go to bed earlier.”

“What?! Why?”

“I have to be here before you rich people wake up for breakfast,” Louis replied, poking his finger into Harry’s arm, opening his eyes long enough to wink at him.

Heart aflutter at the simple gesture, Harry shrugged, aiming for nonchalance as a protective barrier against the swell of his heart. “Don’t blame me. I am never willingly out of bed before nine.”

Louis opened his eyes once more to roll them at Harry before shaking his head, a smile playing on his lips. “The life that you have.” He barely finished his sentence in time before he yawned, wide enough to crack his jaw.

“Okay, we’re going to sleep, I get the message,” Harry said with a laugh, slipping lower in bed to get comfortable.

Louis laughed, too. “ _ Désolé _ .  _ Je ne peux plus faire semblant _ .” He shifted the pillows around for a moment before he settled down and turned on his side to look at Harry. “Sorry, that came out in French, didn’t it? I didn’t notice.”

“I understood, it’s fine. I’m not as bad as you think I am.” He let out a small laugh, glancing at Louis, but looking back up quickly when he met Louis’ gaze.

Harry kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling, following the shifting light from the fireplace as it painted abstract forms through the shadows. He could feel Louis’ eyes on him, the weight of his gaze making Harry self-conscious of how his face looked at rest. He relaxed his brows and tried to make his lips appear poutier than they were before he caught himself doing it and pressed them together in shame.

“I hope I won’t keep you awake,” Louis said, voice softer than before, dropped down to that intimate, hushed level suitable for the liminal time right before sleep. “I move a lot when I sleep, apparently.”

“Don’t worry,” Harry said, keeping his gaze up, unwilling to risk meeting Louis’ eyes when he was so close. “You’re not the first boy I share my bed with.”

His brain caught up with his words a second too late, when it was too late to reel them back in, and he held his breath, eyes wide where they stared up, hoping that the double entendre might be lost in translation to Louis and he might only get the first, innocent meaning that Harry had initially meant and not the second, wildly private one he accidentally shared.

There was a beat, a moment of silence that made Harry hopeful that Louis would not push, but then, in the silence that surrounded them, broken only by the crackling of the fire, Louis inhaled sharply. Unable to curb his morbid curiosity, Harry turned his head to meet his gaze and a smile bloomed on Louis’ lips when he did. Out of sight, Louis reached under the covers and took Harry’s hand in his, squeezing it once.

“It’s the same for me.” Louis accompanied his words with a brush of his thumb over Harry’s knuckles, as though to show which meaning he had chosen to pick up on.

Harry turned on his side, shifting awkwardly so he would not have to pull his hand from Louis’ hold, and the way Louis’ eyes were roaming over his face, the way they dipped down to look at his lips, made Harry’s breath hitch.

Before he could make a fool of himself and let his eyes flutter shut in anticipation of a kiss, Louis let go of his hand and turned on his back, breaking the tension at once.

“Like I was saying, I hope I will not keep you awake. Shake me if I do, okay? Good night, Harry.”

Still reeling from the kiss that never came, Harry hummed in agreement and turned to lie with his back to Louis in an attempt to hide his embarrassment. He knew he had not imagined that Louis considered a kiss, but he could not figure out why he had changed his mind before it could happen.

Despite his mind’s best attempts at keeping him awake to mull over what had happened and imagine the worst, the wine and the food weighed him down and into sleep, lulled by the rhythmic sound of Louis breathing next to him.

* * *

The almost kiss continued to haunt Harry the next day, made worse by the fact that he woke up alone with a note on the pillow that said ‘ _ I have to pretend I did not sleep here and show up to work normally. Thank you for your hospitality, mon ami _ .’ Louis’ handwriting was scraggly, messy in a way his careful professionalism was not, and Harry traced the letters with his finger, searing them into his memory.

He did not see Louis for the entire day; the end of the storm meant Harry had to go back to shadowing his father and between his hangover and the memories of the night before draining his energy by gnawing at his nerves, he was too exhausted to do anything other than collapse on his bed after dinner and go to bed early. 

He would not know what to tell Louis if he saw him, he told himself to justify his cowardly escape from facing what was growing between them. Perhaps Louis did not even want to see him, regretting this lapse of judgement and wishing to put the boundaries back between them, and Harry could not blame him. His job was on the line, surely, and it would be foolish to risk it on a stupid rich boy like Harry.

Convinced as he was of his theory, letting the ache it seeped through his veins weigh him down as penance for even thinking about taking advantage of Louis in that way, he nearly jumped out of his skin when, a few days later, on the morning of Christmas Eve, he walked out of his room and found Louis making his way down the hallway towards him.

“ _ Joyeux Noël! _ ” Louis proclaimed with a smile. Once he had reached Harry, he took him by the arms and pressed their cheeks together first on one side, then the other, before he burst out laughing. “You English people and your  _ froideur _ .”

“Christmas is tomorrow,” Harry replied lamely, clinging to the only words his frozen mind could find.

“Yes, I know, but it is also a Saturday so you don’t have to go to work with your father, which means I can see you and it is a cause to celebrate. And I don’t work tomorrow, so I cannot wish it to you on the right day. And...” Louis paused to build suspense.“And it is my birthday today and, even though I’m at work, I want to enjoy my day with my good friend Harry. Is it a good explanation?” 

There was a smirk on Louis’ face and a twinkle in his eye, and nothing about the way he acted gave any indication that he felt uncomfortable about the events of their night together. Something loosened around Harry’s heart, making him feel lighter.

“Yes, quite,” he replied, then nearly gasped as the full meaning of Louis’ explanation dawned on him. “Oh, and happy birthday! How do you... is it  _ joyeux anniversaire _ ?”

“It is.” Louis was smiling wide enough for his eyes to crinkle. “ _ Merci, mon ami _ .”

The smile made Harry’s knees weak and he bit his lip, looked away. “So, huh, what were your plans for today?”

“I had some ideas. Have you ever sle--” he faltered, frowning. “Sledded?”

“You mean sled? As in... sledding?”

Louis made a grimace. “Now it doesn’t sound like a word. You know, going down a hill in a little sleigh?”

“I... I have not,” Harry replied, cautiously. It sounded like torture, if he was quite honest. “Is that your plan for today?”

“One of them. The hill nearby is perfectly snowy for that. But I thought, also... if your offer still stands to...” he trailed off and averted his gaze, the perfect picture of embarrassment.

“The presents for your siblings. We could go shopping. I would prefer shopping to sledding, to be honest.”

Louis clicked his tongue, shook his head. “No, no. The price  _ you _ pay for forcing me to accept your help is to go sledding after.”

Harry sighed, out of arguments. “Can we get hot chocolate after? Like in stories?”

“The hot chocolate is the best part of any winter sports,” Louis replied, nodding for emphasis. “I will let you have your breakfast and we meet in the lobby.”

Excitement and anticipation kept Harry distracted during breakfast, prompting a remark from his father that he should learn not to have his head in the clouds so much, but Harry brushed it off and ate as fast as was polite to put an end to the unpleasant meal and be on his way to meet Louis.

Louis was already there when Harry arrived in the lobby and his grin as Harry approached reassured Harry that there was nothing odd between them. They headed out in the cold, Harry digging his hands deep inside the pocket of his new coat as he let Louis lead them through the narrow streets. He was happy just to let Louis talk about the history of this part of town, acting like the perfect guide, though Harry would have been glad to listen to him read from a dictionary if it meant hearing the sound of his lovely, accented voice, as clear as the cloudless winter sky awaiting them outside the doors.

The pleasant, mainly one-sided conversation turned slightly sour when they began shopping for the presents, Harry having to argue against Louis’ insistence that everything Harry proposed was too much, really, and he did not have to do it, and though Harry understood why Louis let his pride take over, it made the process more tedious than it needed to be, made him feel like he was doing something wrong by buying Christmas presents for children.

It became worse when Harry insisted that he buy Louis something for his birthday, nearly having to wrestle with him to get him to accept the pullover he had been eyeing the moment they walked into the store. Plush and soft in a rich shade of emerald green, it made Louis’ eyes look nearly turquoise and Harry swore that if Louis refused, he would come back later, without him, and get it anyway.

Thankfully, the unpleasantness dissipated as soon as they were headed back to the hotel, arms laden with packages, Harry having also found presents for his mother and sister, and Louis brought back the topic of sledding.

Harry could have argued, he knew as much, but it was a gorgeous winter day; the sky was cloudless, endlessly blue after days and days of grey, and the sun made the snow glittering and inviting. Instead, he sighed dramatically, for show, and agreed, and soon after he found himself at the top of a hill overlooking the hotel and the river, listening to Louis’ explanations on how to proceed.

The descents were exhilarating and though the cold wind bit at his nose and cheeks, made his eyes water, he felt weightless, almost like he was flying, and no sooner had he reached the bottom of the hill that he was climbing back up, dragging the sled behind him to start all over again. He felt free, his worries and anxiety around Louis and their almost kiss momentarily forgotten, and he would have spent the rest of the day going up and down the hill had it not been for his toes progressively freezing until he could no longer feel them.

They made their way back to the hotel, Harry’s frozen feet making him unsteady, and he lost his balance on a patch of ice, tumbling down and grabbing on to Louis’ sleeve in a desperate attempt to prevent his fall, but only managing to drag him down in the process. Louis fell on top of him with a huff and Harry’s heart stopped to find his face so close to his. 

Harry licked his lips and he saw Louis’ eyes flick down to follow the motion, and he felt it again, that feeling like time stood still, like the one second before their lips met was stretching to build momentum, but the kiss never came.

Instead, Louis stood up and offered his hand to Harry, helping him up and keeping his arm in his, joking that he could not be trusted to stay upright on his own. Up to Harry’s room they went, ordering hot chocolates and biscuits to help thaw their frozen bodies, and Louis acted, once more, as though nothing had happened, as though they had not almost kissed, and Harry followed his lead, though it ached to do so.

It ached to see Louis deny what was so obvious to Harry, that there was something between them, a spark or a flame, however one chose to picture it, and that a kiss would crown it for what it was. He understood and would never force anything, painfully aware of the power imbalance between them despite his best efforts to treat Louis like an equal, but it did not take away the sting of it. 

His stay at the hotel would come to an end soon enough, he figured, and Louis would be out of his life for good, a winter fling to reminisce about while he was groomed to become his father, and though it felt almost criminal to be gloomy on Christmas Eve, he let the dark thoughts take over for a while, allowing himself to feel them head on so that they may dull with time. He knew he was tired from a day outside and that exhaustion always clouded his mind, making him see the worst in everything, so he did not give the thoughts too much salience, knowing they would seem like just a fleeting dark cloud once he was rested.

He had hoped that the hot chocolates would turn into a meal, but Louis excused himself to go back to his family, reminding Harry that it  _ was _ Christmas Eve and he should head back to his. He watched Louis leave, sighing when the door closed on him and vowing that he would be over this silly infatuation come morning.

* * *

The infatuation did not, in fact, disappear the next morning. Harry was kept busy from the moment he woke up with Christmas breakfast, followed by having to accompany his father as he made business visits to try and give off the illusion that he was a charitable man, and by the time they made it back to the hotel, he had to get ready for the Christmas reception they had been invited to, a grand ball in a manor house owned by one of his father’s co-investors. 

Harry did everything he had been raised to do, making small talk and giving compliments to the hosts, inviting young ladies to dance whenever he noticed one looking forlorn that she was not getting attention, being careful not to overindulge in the wine and food so that he would not lose control. He ran through the motions of the evening like he had done so many times before in his life, but his mind was elsewhere.

He wondered how Louis’ Christmas was as he waltzed across the ballroom floor, polished to a mirror shine that reflected the light from the electric chandelier, hoped his siblings would like his presents while in the middle of a discussion about politics. Behind everything he did during that evening, there were thoughts of Louis and a longing to be with him, anywhere but in this manor, surrounded by these cold and calculated people.

Harry left the ball as soon as it was polite to do so and he decided to walk back to the hotel, relishing the thought of being alone for a while. The streets were deserted, the fresh layer of snow undisturbed except for his own footsteps, muffling noises so that it sounded like the entire city was safe and cosy inside, celebrating with their loved ones. 

A melodramatic thought crossed Harry’s mind, that he was not with his own loved one, and he rolled his eyes and exhaled a puff of air, watching the small cloud swirl in the light of a nearby gas lamp.

He was hopeless, falling for what he could not have, for a boy he barely knew, but there was something about Louis. He made Harry feel seen, like they knew each other without needing to talk. He knew better than to let himself yearn for a boy he would say farewell to very soon, yet he also knew that the only thing keeping him from making his way to Louis’ house right now was that Harry had no idea where he lived. 

No matter how much he tried to keep his feet on the ground, he always preferred his daydreams and his silly hopes, and Louis was one of them, filling his mind with images of confessions of love and kisses, and domestic bliss and even growing old together, unfiltered and foolish. 

He slipped into a bath when he arrived at the hotel, his body frozen from the walk, and the movie reel of his mind supplied memories of their first meeting as soon as he relaxed into the warm water. He let it roll, let himself indulge in it for the moment before he would set himself straight the next day and move on from the silliness, once and for all. He had to, for his own sake, he decided, even nodding to himself to seal the deal. For the moment, though, he would let his mind run free with imagined scenarios of how different their first meeting might have been if Louis had stepped into the bathroom and–

He shivered and closed his eyes, sinking lower in the water.

* * *

He did not get to see Louis until New Year’s Eve, not even once or twice in the hallways like before; he was dragged instead all across town by his father who was not done grooming him into the perfect businessman. By then, his daydreams had turned ridiculous, elaborate and detailed from going over the same scenes over and over again, fleshing them out until they felt more real than the repetitive tedium of his life. It almost felt like he had made Louis up, dreamed him to life in a feverish bout of loneliness.

Yet, on the morning of December 31st, he was woken up by the sound of the telephone in his room ringing. He felt an initial burst of annoyance before his heart went wild with the realization that there was only one person who might be calling his room.

He leapt out of bed and answered the phone, breathless from excitement.

“Hello?”

“ _ Bonjour, Harry _ ,” Louis’ voice came from the other end of the line. Harry gripped the phone tighter. “ _ Are you still coming to the party tonight? _ ”

“Yes, yes, of course, if I’m still invited!”

Louis let out a small laugh, his breath making the line crackle. “ _ You are. Maman won’t talk about anything else than ‘le gentil Anglais qui nous a fait des cadeaux’. Do you have a pen? I’ll give you the address, you can ask the front desk of the hotel to arrange a driver for you, fancy boy.” _

The moniker made his heart flutter and he grinned, pressing the back of his hand to his lips as he searched for pen and paper.

“I have them,” he said once he found them. He listened as Louis told him his address and he jotted down the number, but he paused at the street name. “Can you spell that?”

Louis laughed and spelled the name, not without adding a teasing comment to the end of his sentence.

“ _ Dress... normally, _ ” he continued. “ _ Don’t come here wearing a suit. It’s not a fancy party. Be comfortable. And bring a pair of shoes. _ ”

“Anything else I should know?”

“ _Hm, well, be here around 8?_ _I have to go help Maman, now, but I will see you soon._ ” Louis paused for a second too long, turning the silence into the weighted space where it was obvious he had meant to say something, but held back. “ _Have a nice day, Harry_.”

Harry held on to the phone for a moment after he heard the line click as it disconnected, fluttering heart now racing in his chest. He finally hung up the telephone and braced himself on the desk, taking a moment to straighten his thoughts before he began worrying about what he would wear.

Normal clothes, Louis had said, but a suit  _ was  _ normal clothes for Harry. He looked through what he had packed for the holiday and settled on something he might have worn on a night out to a pub with his school friends, trousers and suspenders over a white shirt. 

The hours seemed to stretch endlessly as the day went by, every minute an eternity to his fraying nerves, yet the time to leave finally came and found Harry sitting in the back of a car, wringing his hands with nerves as they made their way through unfamiliar streets.

The automobile stopped in front of a row of terrace houses. Louis’ house was easy to find, the windows brightly lit up like a beacon calling people in. Harry made his way to the door and rang, bouncing slightly on his feet as he waited.

The door swung open to reveal a little girl with Louis’ eyes and he smiled at her. She stayed silent, staring up at him with curiosity.

“Hi! I’m here to see Louis?” he said. “For the party?”

She blinked and frowned. “ _ Louis! _ ” she called down the hallway behind her. “ _ Il y a un monsieur qui parle anglais à la porte! Viens m’aider! _ ”

Seconds later, Louis ran out of a room and made his way to the door, smiling big enough to crinkle his eyes. Harry swallowed, realising he was seeing Louis out of his uniform for the first time, except for pyjamas. He glowed in the warm light coming from the house and the casual clothes made him seem relaxed, matching his personality so much more than the stiff uniform Harry was used to. 

He was wearing the green sweater Harry had gifted him and the sight sent tingles through Harry’s body, all the way to the tips of his fingers and his toes.

“Harry! Come in, come in!” he said, pulling Harry in by grabbing his arm and pressing their cheeks together in greeting. A warm scent of baked goods and cologne lingered when Louis pulled back. 

“Your boots go here,” Louis continued, pointing to where a dozen pairs were already gathered, “and your coat goes on my mother’s bed with the others. Give it to me. I’m so glad you’re here!”

Louis was nearly bouncing with excitement as Harry followed him down the hall after slipping off his shoes, watching as Harry dropped his coat on top of others piled up on the bed.

“Your sister didn’t understand me,” Harry commented.

“Oh, no. They were too young when Dad died, they never really learned English. Maman speaks it, though, don’t worry.”

“You called your father Dad?” Harry asked, curious, before he shrugged. “ _ Je parle français, aussi. Un petit peu. _ ” 

“ _ Pas assez, par contre _ ,” Louis replied and winked. “My English father was Dad, but my French mother is  _ Maman _ . Keep up! Now come, I’ll introduce you.”

Louis took him by the hand, the warmth a stark contrast against Harry’s frozen fingers, and dragged him through the house, introducing him to everyone, to his mother and siblings, to uncles and aunts, to grandparents and cousins, and to neighbours and friends of the family, everyone greeting him with smiles and gentle teases about Harry’s broken French. Louis never let go of his hand, finally taking him to the dining room where a table was laden with plates of food, insisting Harry take a glass of punch before crossing over to the living room and sitting them down on the couch.

The Christmas tree standing by the couch filled the room with its clean, fresh scent and the baubles hung on its branches glistened in the lights. Children were playing with toys on the floor near them and Louis pointed out his siblings amongst them before he finally turned his full attention to Harry.

“I’m happy you’re here,” he said, still holding Harry’s hand.

“You already said.” Harry took a sip of punch to drown out his terrible reply.

“I know, but I wanted to say it again. I was worried you would not. It’s not fancy enough for you.”

Harry rolled his eyes, shaking his head, tightening his grip on Louis’ hand. “No, it’s perfect. I love it. It’s so much better than the Christmas ball I had to go to.”

“You are lying.” Louis let out a laugh. “I don’t believe you!”

“I’m not lying! This is much more welcoming. People are actually having fun!” As though on cue, loud laughter erupted from the adjoining dining room and Harry glanced over to look at the source, smiling to see people brimming with such happiness.

“Well, we try. Maman tries to be a mother to everyone she meets,” Louis replied, fondness lacing his voice and giving his face a soft, happy glow. “Are you hungry? I forgot to ask, but you can eat as much as you want, there’s enough.”

Harry shook his head, took a sip of his drink. “I like seeing where you live,” he said instead. “I feel like I know you better, now.”

“I won’t show you my room, that would tell you too much about me.” Louis grimaced playfully. “I’m not very tidy.”

Harry studied him for a moment before he smiled. “I’m not entirely surprised by that, to be honest.”

“ _ Charmant _ .”

They laughed until their eyes met and the laughter died out, replaced by a tension that released butterflies in Harry’s stomach, made his heart beat faster, and still they were holding hands, neither of them showing any sign that they wanted to let go.

It was too much.

“I think I want food, after all,” Harry said to break the moment before he lost his mind.

He let go of Louis’ hand and stood up, making his way to the food and piling things on a plate, barely paying attention to what he was getting. He kept glancing back to Louis, who had not moved from the couch and was observing him, and whenever their eyes met Harry would turn in shame and add more food to the plate, until he could no longer fit anything and had to retreat back to Louis.

“So you went from not hungry to very hungry?” Louis asked, eyeing the plate that Harry placed on the coffee table before he sat down.

“Everything looked good. And we can share.”

The presence of food between them, of an activity to keep them occupied, alleviated some of the tension, though Harry was still acutely aware of how close Louis was, his mind focused on every little thing Louis did. Harry could not keep his eyes off him. After being apart for six days, after nearly convincing himself that he had dreamed Louis up, it felt too good to be true to have him so close, to have his undivided attention. 

Harry could almost forget that they were at a party as he listened with rapt attention to Louis’ stories about his life and his family, the boy opening up more than ever before, it seemed, now that he was in a comfortable environment and he could be himself.

It pushed Harry further into his infatuation, dangerously close to love, and any thought he might have had to preserve himself by taking a step back was long gone, forgotten at the door when he was greeted with a bright smile and sparkling eyes. 

Hours passed, the children running in and out of the room, their laughter filling up the space like bubbles in a glass of champagne. He never left Louis’ side, drinking in his presence, taking in as much as he could before it all ended. 

As they neared midnight, the guests began moving to the living room, excitedly chatting as they got ready for the countdown. Without warning, stopping mid-sentence, Louis stood up, motioning for Harry to come along with him. 

“Where are we going?” Harry glanced back at the room they had just left, worried they would miss the entire point of the gathering.

“It’s too warm in there, I need fresh air,” Louis replied, taking them out on the back porch and leaving the door ajar, the din of conversations still reaching them.

The air was cold against Harry’s skin, his thin shirt useless against it, but it had been so warm in the room that it barely mattered. Louis leaned against the railing of the porch, looking up at the stars, exhaling a long cloud of air.

“We’ll miss the countdown,” Harry pointed out, coming to lean against the railing by his side.

Louis tore his eyes away from the night sky to look at Harry, his eyes nearly indigo in the low light. “We can have our own, can’t we? I just... I wanted you for myself for a moment.”

To punctuate his words, Louis reached over and took Harry’s hand in his, entwining his fingers. Harry licked his lips, his breath hitching in his throat.

“Oh...” was all he managed to say in reply, though he tightened his fingers around Louis’.

“Have I... understood this wrong?”

Harry shook his head. “No... not at all. I thought... I thought it was one-sided.”

Louis let out a puff of air, a short laugh. “I was being professional.”

“And now?” Harry turned to face him, leaning his hip against the railing and watching as Louis did the same. “What about now?”

Louis took a step closer, his gaze steady on Harry, the cold air painting his cheeks red. His voice dropped lower when he spoke, warm and inviting.

“I’m not at work.”

The voices inside grew louder, chanting in unison ‘ _ dix, neuf, huit... _ ’ Their eyes met and Harry held his breath, knowing what was about to happen. His eyelids fluttered shut in anticipation and as the guests erupted in loud cheers at the count of ‘ _ zéro! Bonne année! _ ’, Louis closed the thin sliver of space left between them, their lips meeting at the turn of the year, marking a new beginning.

Harry let go of Louis’ hand to place both of his on Louis’ neck, holding him in case he had plans to move back. His fickle heart hammered in his chest until Harry could feel the pulses in his ears. As he had feared, Louis tried to take a step back, but Harry held on tighter, muttering ‘no’ against his lips as he kissed him with more intent.

Louis indulged him for a moment more before he pulled out of the kiss, stepping out of Harry’s reach with a laugh. “ _ J’ai besoin d’air _ ,” he breathed, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth.

Harry laughed, too, and ran a hand through his hair. “I didn’t think...”

“I thought I was obvious. I was flirting.  _ Outrageusement _ . I thought you were flirting back.”

“I just thought you liked teasing me,” Harry replied, shrugging though he was now casting a new light on the past weeks. “Was I? Flirting?”

“It felt like it. When you said you had boys in your bed before...” Louis reached over to brush his hand down Harry’s arm, sending shivers up Harry’s skin in their wake.

“Oh, no, that was--you understood that right. I didn't mean to say it, though.” He let out a nervous laugh. “But despite--despite my current blush, I am no blushing virgin.”

Louis laughed, too, shaking his head. “How do you say? Minx?” When Harry nodded, Louis smiled. “So you’re telling me I could have kissed you a long time ago?”

“Almost from the first day.”

Opening his eyes wide, Louis sighed. “It’s a shame it took us this long. We wasted precious time. You leave...?”

“Too soon, but I’ll fix it,” Harry said as gears began turning in his head.

Puzzle pieces he had been handed over the past weeks suddenly fit together and he could see the path ahead with a clarity he never had before. Though always unavoidable, a destination decided for him with no chance of appeal, his perspective on it shifted from a death sentence to an opportunity. He let out a small laugh, catching the ironic poetry of a single kiss turning the worst possible outcome he could have lived through into a desirable conclusion.

“How?” Louis asked. “Are you going to move here?” He said it sardonically, punctuating his sentence with a dry laugh, but it died out when Harry nodded.

“My father has been grooming me for it. He never said it directly, but I’m not an idiot. He wants me to represent him here.”

“So you’ll move here... for me,” Louis repeated, frowning. “We barely know each other.”

Harry shook his head. “Don’t... didn’t you just hear me say that I’m not an idiot? I’m not moving here  _ for _ you. But I am indeed moving here, and you happen to be here. And we can... see how it goes.”

Louis shook his head, laughing. “Well, I’ll be damned.  _ Bonne année, Louis _ , hm?”

Harry leaned in for a kiss, but he was roughly interrupted by the door bursting open, letting out a wave of children begging them go come back inside to the party. They let themselves be dragged back in, exchanging a glance that turned into a fit of giggles. 

The living room was transformed when they arrived; furniture had been pushed aside to make room to dance, a guest had brought out a fiddle and lively music now filled the suffocating room. Louis barely gave Harry enough time to take in the scene before he let out a happy whoop and grabbed him by the hand, pulling him into an energetic dance like nothing Harry had ever done before.

Harry let himself be led, laughing and laughing as they twirled and moved around the room. His smile stayed on when Louis pulled him out of the room and into the hallway, looking around cautiously before he kissed Harry, holding Harry tightly against him. Harry smiled into the kiss and held on to Louis’ waist, hands fisted in the soft fabric of his sweater, the spicy sweet scent of Louis’ cologne still as overwhelming as it was on the first day. The slide of their lips, the sound of the music coming from the next room and the warmth of Louis in his arms finally quieted his heart, soothing it with soft whispers of ‘you’re home, you finally found home’.

Harry did not stop smiling until he collapsed into a taxi under the grey light of dusk. Louis made a promise to stop by his room the next day and he stole a discreet kiss to the back of Harry’s hand before he closed the door of the automobile for him.

Turning in the seat so he could look at him until he was out of sight, Harry let out a giddy laugh that attracted the attention of the driver.

“ _ Qu’est-ce qu’il y a? _ ” the man asked, meeting Harry’s eyes in the rearview mirror with an amused crinkle of his eyes.

Harry could only imagine what he looked like, flushed and giggly from the party and the kisses, and he shook his head. “ _ Rien. Je suis heureux de n’être pas à New York _ .”

* * *

**Epilogue**

Harry stretched, turning his neck left and right to ease the muscles and let out a sigh. Out of his office window, big snowflakes were lazily twirling down like feathers in the wind and he smiled as he straightened his papers and neatly put his pen down in a parallel line next to the pile. He stood up and made his way through the house, the creaky old floors announcing his arrival before he made it to the living room.

Louis looked up from the book he was reading by the fireplace and smiled. Tchaikovsky’s  _ The Nutcracker _ was playing on their new gramophone proudly standing in a corner of the room, the crackle of the needle on the record harmonizing with that of the fire roaring in the hearth.

“Are you done for the day?” Louis asked, stretching lazily and putting his book down.

Harry joined him on the couch, curling up against him. Louis wrapped his arms around him and placed a kiss to the top of his head, clicking his tongue when Harry reached around him to take a sip from his cup of tea. He had turned Louis onto tea in the past year and he definitely counted it as a small victory. 

“I decided I was.” Harry frowned, concentrating for the next part. “ _ J’ai décidé que je le... que je...” _ he faltered, looking up at Louis.

“ _ Que je l’étais _ ,” Louis completed, kissing his forehead once more.

They were working on Harry’s French now that he needed it in his daily life and his skills had made leaps and bounds in the past year, though some verb tenses still caused him headaches. Verbs, and the sex of objects, which would never make sense to him, but seemed intuitive to everyone else. How was he supposed to just  _ know _ that a chair was female?

The truth was that he still had a lot of work to do, the business not caring that it was Christmas Eve, but they were expected at Louis’ mother’s house for dinner and he wanted some time alone with Louis before they were swept up by the whirlwind of Louis’ birthday and Christmas.

The past year had been so busy, it felt like this was the first time he could take the time to look back on everything that had happened. His move to Canada had taken most of the end of winter to plan, sending him back and forth across the Atlantic more than once as he looked for a house and got his papers in order. He found a three story stone house for sale, just around the corner from the hotel, with yellow and green front door and window sills, and he signed for it without a second thought, knowing as soon as he walked in that this was the one. 

He was getting settled into his new life by the time the first buds of spring blossomed on the trees, helped by a disbelieving Louis who put up a symbolic fight before he agreed to move in with Harry, insisting that he would pay his fair share of everything even as Harry shook his head and kissed him to shut him up, asking if he had any idea just how rich Harry was, assuring him that he could not begin to imagine how small a difference it would make to buy food for two instead of one.

Months later, Harry still sometimes caught Louis looking at him like he could not quite believe he was truly there, like he could not believe his luck, and he knew the look was mirrored on his own face. He had expected more time to pass between his arrival and the bloom of their relationship, but the impassioned letters they exchanged in his absence solidified his first intuition, making him show up on Louis’ porch on a rainy late March day to ask him to come with him without arguing.

He took Louis to the house, letting him visit its empty rooms, watching as his eyes sparkled with desire and barely repressed envy, and he casually dropped a question about which room should be their bedroom for the pleasure of seeing Louis slowly understand what he had meant, his eyes widening under the emotions, rendered speechless for one rare moment.

They chose not to have house staff, to preserve their intimacy, putting up a second bedroom to help with the pretense of two friends sharing the expenses of a house, and settled into their new life together.

“ _ Ta mère nous attend-- _ huh _ , en huit heures? _ ” he asked.

“ _ À dix-huit heures, oui _ . Six o’clock, not eight.”

“ _ D’accord _ ,” Harry replied, nodding and rubbing his cheek against the soft green sweater Louis was wearing, closing his eyes. “I can’t believe she’s making me come to Midnight Mass with your family,” he said, laughing to himself.

“What? Worried you’ll be smited for stepping inside a Catholic church?”

“Smitten,” Harry corrected automatically, bracing himself for the pinch to his waist that inevitably came seconds later.

“We’re going to make her happy, it’s important for her. So important that she’ll even force Anglicans to come along, like she did with my father before you.” Louis laughed, his fingers tracing soft patterns on Harry’s back.

“I didn’t even go to Midnight Mass for my own mother.  _ Pour ma propre maman _ !”

“Yes, but my  _ maman _ is special and we do whatever she asks us to.”

Harry smiled and nodded again, reminiscing on the way she had adopted him into the family like the lonely expatriate he was, taking care of him like only a mother would, helping with the homesickness that sometimes rendered him almost paralyzed with grief.

They were traveling to England for Harry’s birthday in February to see his family, Louis coming along and brimming with excitement to go abroad for the first time in his life, and Harry had already begun weaving through his letters home the lie that Louis was his personal assistant to explain his presence. 

The record stopped playing, but neither of them moved to turn it over. Louis was running his hand through Harry’s hair, messing up his curls with idle purpose.

“Are you sleeping?” Louis asked softly.

“No, I’m not sleeping.  _ Je suis bien _ .”

Louis stroked his cheek before returning to his hair, massaging his scalp. “ _ Moi aussi _ ,  _ je suis bien _ .  _ Je t’aime. _ ”

Harry smiled, leaning up to kiss Louis softly. “I love you, too.”

Louis returned the kiss, tugging lightly at Harry’s curls until he let out a small moan and batted his hand away with a laugh. “You’re a menace.”

“You wouldn’t want me any other way,” Louis replied, his grin matching Harry’s. “It’s a good life.”

Harry moved in to softly kiss Louis again. It truly was a good life.

**Author's Note:**

> The Tumblr post to reblog can be found [here](https://scrunchyharry.tumblr.com/post/639045750282649600/as-in-olden-days-a-christmas-fic-by).
> 
> Their house at the end is [a real house](https://imgur.com/a/v2HLdGT) I saw when I visited the city this summer.


End file.
